


The Unbreakable

by laireshi



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, M/M, Soulmates, Unhappy Ending, hickmanvengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-09 04:11:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17399828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi
Summary: Steve deserves to have a soulmate. Someone good. Someone who could love him without betraying him. Someone who’s not Tony.





	The Unbreakable

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nostalgicatsea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgicatsea/gifts).



People who don’t have a soulmate lament the fact and pray for one. Tony Stark lies to his soulmate’s face every minute of every day and can’t help but think it’s fucking _unfair_.

Not to him: he doesn’t deserve anything else than this pain. He knows he can’t be Steve’s soulmate and he’s made his peace with it a long time ago. But Steve; Steve deserves to have a soulmate. Someone good. Someone who could love him without betraying him. Someone who’s not Tony.

 _It’s to save Steve_ , Tony tells himself every day, every time he smiles at Steve and they plan the Avengers team between them and fight the bad guys, and then he hides in his workshop and plans how to destroy the world and can’t help but think the bad guys they fought have nothing on him.

It’s to stop the incursions. The end justifies the means, right, it has to. But Tony’s still designing the most destructive weapons in the history of humanity.

 _It’s to save Steve_ , he repeats over and over until the words feel empty even to him.

***

Tony’s been working all night when the door to his workshop flies in, Thor behind it, and next to him, Steve.

And Tony _knows_.

“I remember,” Steve says, and then he says something else, but Tony doesn’t hear him.

He bends in half in sharp pain in what feels like every cell in his body. He fights for breathe, and he can’t, and finally it all centres on his wrist, a feeling like someone’s holding a flame to his skin.

 _Only death can break a soulmate bond,_ he thinks, but suddenly he’s got no doubt that if he looked at his own wrist, it’d be blank.

When the pain recedes enough for him to stand back up, Tony expects Steve to tell him to stop pretending, to fucking explain himself.

But Steve’s on his knees, clawing at his own wrist.

 _No_.

Thor looks between them, an understanding on his face, and he leaves without a word; Tony’s pathetically grateful for that.

“Steve,” he says, and there’s nothing, it’s like a normal name that Tony has no right to use.

Steve stills. He doesn’t look at Tony. He pulls his sleeve up and uncovers his smooth skin with no name on it.

 _Only death_ , Tony thinks again, and figures he’d find a way beyond that, figures he’d betray his soulmate so bad the bond would snap.

Wonders how it survived all their previous fights, really.

“I couldn’t understand,” Steve says, getting up, in a terrible, quiet voice so different to him yelling earlier. “How could _my soulmate_ have done this to me?” He shakes his head. “I have my answer. You must be so _happy_ now.”

Tony looks at him, pleading, because he’s made the connection but he _refuses_ to believe he is— _was—_ Steve’s soulmate after all.

When Steve punches him, the pain is nothing.

It was all to save Steve, and Tony destroyed him instead.


End file.
